Crossroads
by Echante
Summary: Lots of Mark and Addison backstory, based on the idea that they'd gone out before Addison and Derek went out. It's also another story about friendship and trying to fix what you broke. Mark/Addison/Derek


A/N: The more I think about it, the more afraid I am that they're going to use this cross-over to nail the coffin shut if ya know what I mean. Like to permanently end all the hope that Mark/Addison shippers have. Their going to kill it and I'm going to cry. So while I was thinking these horrible thoughts I wrote another story. This is my oh my god keep Mark and Addison together GODDAMNIT.

_In all my revere, I thought I felt a stare,_

_A feather in my hand, a flower in your hair._

_Do you know me at all?_

I'm afraid I must warn you that this story is not comfortable, no, not anything close. In fact, the truth of it is, it is straight out cruel. The world can rightfully hate me for its existence, but I know I could never forgive myself for silence. This story is a list of my mistakes, it is the evidence to my terrible humanity, and it is a warning against the sins of jealousy. It is a period of my life possessed by darkness and unadulterated anger. When my soul saw a lust for revenge and killed innocence to fulfill it.

Columbia pre-med is very impressive in itself. My best-friend Mark, was the first in our class. The class below us, was led by a fiery sophomore with long legs and a short temper. In other words, it was headed by the one and only Addison Forbes Montgomery. Every year, the number one rising senior and the number one rising junior get together to have lunch and discuss the changing of guard as it were. Naturally, Mark came back from his luncheon charmed and smitten. "I'm going to marry that woman," was the first thing he said to me upon returning. But I was pissed about this. I had my eye on her for weeks, I had been the one who first noticed her stutter as she gave her speech about the importance of the medical field in society. I had been the one who'd sat through endless hours of childhood stories just to try and gather the courage to ask her out, and he comes in so effortlessly. I was infuriated; yet he never knew.

She said yes the first time he asked and why wouldn't she? What kind of girl says 'no' to the great Mark Sloan? And they were happy together. That's what I resented most. She wasn't a conquest. She used to come over to our apartment and make him tea because he'd gotten hurt playing basketball. He would giddily order Chinese and give me half and save the other half so he could surprise her in the dead of night with himself and food. I hated every moment I had to watch them together. It was disgusting. Enter Melissa.

Mark and Melissa had gone out at some point. Their relationship had not been a good or honorable or even decent one. It was based on a strong mutual addiction to sex and to company and neither had stayed faithful for the three months they went out. But they had a habit of ending up in bed together when they were both bored and it was a mistake they made continuously.

When Mark began going out with Addison, he ended the whole thing with a resounding finality that startled Melissa. And Melissa didn't like being startled. So she concocted a plan. And she managed to include me in it.

The first day of my fall from grace, began with a knock on the door. It manifested with strange ordinariness, so I answered it nonchalantly, "come-in," I allowed and in she did.

"Hey Der- is Mark around."

I'd still been in the good roommate mode when I looked at her through suspicious eyes, "Mark doesn't want to see you." I told her.

"Oh God I know," she said rolling her eyes, "look, I'm going to get to the point here, I want him back, pure and simple. And I want her out of the way."

"Addison?" I asked stupidly.

"Yeah."

"So why are you telling me this?"

"Because," she says leaning in with a malicious half-smile, " I have from a pretty good source that you want Addison for yourself."

I crossed my arms and didn't say a word.

"Oh," she says, lighting up, "and by the way, I'm pregnant."

I looked up at her in shock.

"Is it his?" I asked, my voice a little high pitched and incredulous.

"Who cares," she said waving the question away, "as long as he thinks it's his."

And it was in this moment when I parted ways with righteousness. When I considered how he had the perfect girl, the perfect grades, the Godly looks and the infallible athletic prowess. I was jealous so I asked, "What's your plan?"

She smiled because she knew she had me.

"Mark," I approached him, so charged with jealousy, that I forgot that I stood before a man that would lay down his life for me.

"Hey man!" he looked over at me and grinned, and for a moment I felt sick to my core.

"Mark," I finished the job though, "Melissa called."

He looked annoyed, "did you tell her to go fuck herself?"

"Mark," I repeated somberly, hoping to impress a severity into the situation, "she's pregnant."

I had never seen a face more shocked than the one that stood before me that day, and at the time I recognized it as fear of being a parent, but later, as I tried to look back and reevaluate, I realized  
that he was heartbroken. I realized that he knew that inherently, he was a good man and that would be the death of him.

Meanwhile, half-way across campus, Melissa had caught up to Addison, waving her down. "Are you Mark Sloane's girlfriend?" she asked belligerently.

When Addison answered with a confused stuttered 'yeah,' Melissa dove for the pray. She gasped with dramatics and whispered as she pulled her into a hug, "I'm so sorry."

Confused Addison asked, "About what?"

Instead if answering, Melissa sobbed, "I didn't know he had a girlfriend! He never seemed like that kind of guy! And now I'm pregnant and I don't know what to do!"

Her words had the right affect. By that night the two of them were broken up. The next morning I went over to comfort her. By the next week we were going out.

Melissa had a miscarriage and Mark couldn't stand her so he left a month later. He used to watch me and Addison with such wistfulness and I would stare back in happiness; I won; I got the girl for once and I was happy. I married her. I promised to love her forever.

It's a strange thing about karma. The romance wore off and she began resenting me. A little bit at a time she began resenting me. She hated my hours at work; she hated my push toward having a child. She hated my insistence that she reconcile with her family. She hated what I loved for the pure sport of annoying me. So I left, I avoided her through the entrapment of surgery, but loneliness was the greatest  
crime I committed against her. There was hatred in her soul and she turned to Mark with nostalgia and desperation. I don't know how long the affair lasted before I found out, but he loved her like I never  
had. In his arms, she wasn't a trophy, but a love. I remember going to New York one time with the intention of retrieving my wife and seeing them together in Central Park, his arms wrapped around her smile dancing around his words and I felt sick. So in my last act of cruelty I enlisted my mother, my best friend's greatest weakness was lust and he held out through countless seducers until my mother wore him down, and made sure Addison knew.

I remember getting the call and preparing for my wife to come home, only to find that I didn't really want her to. That I had found real love that had been birthed from a better place and had never been put through the strains of vengeance. And I felt guilty. I felt guilty that all of that work had amounted to nothing but a broken brother and fallen angel.

I twisted my crime again and again in my mind then. I remember the day I went to New York to get Addison back, and I saw the two of them walking together, tucked into each other. I'm pretty sure Mark saw me that day, because he hurried when I passed by and looked everywhere but in my direction. There was real fear in his eyes at my appearance, and I didn't mean to hurt him. I wanted confirmation and I suppose I sought it in the wrong venue.

The reason I'm writing this all down is because I told my best friend the other day. I told him that he never had a child. I told him I lied. I told him that the whole mess was my fault. I told him I felt guilty. I told him that Addison had called looking for him while she was in L.A. and I had forgotten to give him the message. I told him the irony that she'd almost become involved with a married man and I told him that she loved him. I told him that I was a bastard and only made him believe he was. I told him that he was my best friend and I'm sorry. And the worst part of it all was that he didn't punch me. He didn't yell. He didn't do anything recognizable. Instead, he sighed and buried his head in his hands and sobbed. He cried drawn out tears of deep sadness and ingrained longing and I felt him release. I felt all the tension of all the years drain away.

I waited for him to dry his tears and then presented him with my final gift. A ticket to L.A. A job offer. A house. A life. And I watched as he stared into my hands as if they contained the future. And then I saw a slow smile spread across the face of my best friend and brother and nodded as he said to me, "Thank you."

I'm not sure where the two of them are today. It's only been a couple of weeks and he hasn't called, which could be a good thing or a bad thing. Lexie Grey has been walking around like a train wreck and I feel bad for her. But she stood in between a collision course and eventually would have been wounded in the retribution. In the end of the day, Mark and Addison proved to me the worth of soul mates, of matches made before you were born. There's a little girl somewhere waiting to be born, she'll have red hair and mischievous eyes that sparkle like nothing else, and she will be the most loved being to enter this earth. Of this I am certain. Because for the first time in a long time, there is peace on earth.


End file.
